An Interior Designer’s Guide To Optimizing The Space In Your House

The key to optimizing space usage in your home is to be alert and creative, says Subrota Biswas, founder and CEO of Tilottoma, a leading interior design company from Bangladesh

Space management is a big part of our work here at Tilottoma.

As a full-service interior design firm, with a special focus on residential interior design, space management especially in residential interior design, in your home in other words, is something we have to deal with on a regular basis.

And I am also regularly asked to give some kind of a roadmap or outline as to how someone can go about optimizing the space usage in their own home.

Now, space management as a part of a full-fledged interior design process can be a long-drawn and technical task. However, basic space management in your home is not that difficult, actually.

All you need to do is be observant and let your creative ability work do the work.

Let’s see a few quick fixes that you can easily implement in your own home with maybe a little DIY and absolutely no hassle at all.

The space above…

Typically, there tends to be some space above certain structures in your home like the door, the clothes cabinet and the bookshelf.

You can fix up some shelves there that can hold some of your stuff.

Now, it might seem that this is a bit absurd. There’s also some space available above a table and a chair, isn’t there? So why did I specify the door, a clothes cabinet and a bookshelf?

That’s because all 3 stand upright/are vertical structures. Which means that the space above them will not be visible to a person unless they look up. That is critical because if there are shelves placed at eye level, the room will seem stuffy/too full.

…and the space below

The space below the stairs and the space below the bed are the two most common examples in this category.

You can ask an interior designer or an architect to repurpose the space under the stairs to anything from an extra clothes cabinet to a space for your cleaning equipment or even somewhere to keep your books.

Some people even use such a space as a playing area for children.

As for the bed, you can invest in a bed with built in drawers which you can use to store bed sheets.

You may not need to buy a new bed. You can consult with an interior designer about whether drawers can be built into your existing bed since many interior designers do offer customer furniture services.

The attic

While many people do not have the luxury of having an attic, if you are among those who do, ten to one you’re currently under-utilizing it.

Most people use the attic as a dumping ground for whatever they don’t use regularly but don’t want to throw away either.

In a way, most attics represent the graveyard for organized interior design.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Just organize whatever is there in the attic; throw out or sell anything you haven’t used in a few years and no longer need and you’ll have gained a lot of space – maybe enough for a study.

Certainly, it will all look a whole lot cleaner.

The linen closet and the bed

Why the linen closet and the bed?

Because this space optimization uses the two together.

If you invest in a bed with built in drawers or you just maintain some bins at the foot of the bed to store your linen in, you have a whole linen closet free to keep everything from clothes to books to cutlery.

To sum up,

It’s highly likely there’s a whole lot of space in your home, unseen by you and waiting to be used creatively.

As an interior designer from Bangladesh, we often get consultation queries about space management in homes.

The top 4 ways to optimize the space you have available in your home are

Build shelves on top of vertical structures like doors and bookcases

Utilize the space below the stairs and the bed

Organize the attic

Store linen by your bed and use your linen closet to stock items like clothes, books and even cutlery.

I wish you all the best in re-organizing your home!

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